Climbing the Ranks - Chapter 20 preview (Patreon)

He woke up a second later, still hurting. He pushed himself upwards, struggling to rise as he gripped the sword in his hand. Ribs were cracked, his hip twisted and his leg bruised form where he had impacted ground and eventually the tree. To his surprise, the monster was dead; but the problem was – there were still other babi ngepit.

Three left. Not the largest, in fact one was an adolescent, half the size of the usual. Arthur eyes narrowed, even as the monsters charged. The first to move forwards was the largest of the group, going straight into a direct charge. Propped up against the tree, Arthur breathed slowly, knowing he had one chance.

Timing. It all came down to timing. Figure out how fast the monster could reach him, figure out when it was when it would be too late to turn, figure out how long he needed to dodge. If he was uninjured, he could do that math on instinct. Now… leg injured, his body tired, he had to guess.

And hope he was not wrong.

Now!

He dodged to the side, the babi ngepit turning its head a little to track the cultivator’s fleeing body. A pained whimper as he hit the ground, bouncing off roots and grass before the monster hit the tree. One tusk embedded itself deep within the tree, the entire tree shaking.

Pulling himself to his knee, he lurched forwards and plunged the weapon deep into the boar. A twist of his hand, the blade extracted and widening the wound as he pulled his blade out. Then, he turned on his knees, the rumble of even more monsters approaching making him wince.

Damn it.

Too close. No time to dodge. Thankfully, it was the adolescent monster. Rather than run away, or try it, he stayed focused instead and braced his sword against his hip. He shoved forwards at the last second, locking his body tight as he allowed the smaller pig to skewer itself on his weapon. It still bowled him over, hundred of pounds of meat and fury pounding into his chest and legs.

Bruising, pain, even worse than before. Only good thing was that the momentum drove the monster off his body mostly, a heave of legs and arms pushing the bottom half away from him. Arthur whimpered and twisted, seeing the last monster turn away from its own charge rather than bowl over its own kind.

It ran pass him, buying Arthur time.

Time for him to struggle to his feet, to stand as he desperately pushed. Pain, fury, arrogance. He should never have tried this, never taken the risk. But he would not die here, not when he was so close to finishing this battle.

One last babi ngepit. One last fight.

It was charging him, but he could barely stand. He could not dodge aside had no tree to trick the monster into embedding itself. All he could do was gamble. Hands holding the spear, shifting a little so that he held it alongside his arm, he focused his entire body as he hurled his arm forward.

Focused Strike but twisted, pushed into his weapon and throw as he lurched forwards. The weapon flew forwards, sinking deep into the monster’s lower body even as the Energy shoved into the weapon forced it to stumble, stop and…

Die.

Arthur’s jaw dropped, blinking at the sudden end of this battle.

Exhaustion and pain took over as adrenaline faded, taking the gap created by shock to invade his consciousness and drive it from him. Leaving him to slump senseless on the ground among the corpses of those he killed.

***

Waking up was a painful process, one that almost made Arthur choose to fall unconscious once more. Yet, recollection of where he was forced him to his feet, hand scrambling for a weapon and finding nothing on-hand. He searched around with bleary eyes, memory of what happened coming slow.

“Right, right, I might… might have thrown. Blown… aside a weapon or two,” hunched over his broken ribs, he stumbled over to his weapon and picked it up. Once, twice and then a third time he attempted to sheathe the weapon, only succeeding on the last try. Then, he bent over again to pick up the crystal and tipped too far, landing on his face, only barely managing to roll a little as his body gave way.

For a time he just lay there, staring up at the sky. Pain pushing and fading in waves, all he was able to do was hold on like a tiny raft of consciousness on the waves of agony. Eventually, the tide swept out and Arthur rolled over to grab and store the crystal in his pouch.

“Bugger dignity… taka adah duit guna dignity.”

Suiting words to action, Arthur started crawling around the clearing. On hands and knees, stopping occasionally when the pain was too much for him, he picked up the monster crystals. Each breath made his ribs ache, each time he put weight on his left hip or arm, he wanted to cry. Even a glimpse under the paired moons of the tower, he could see the dark bruising all along his limbs.

If there was one thing to be grateful about, Arthur knew it was that none of the broken ribs had pierced his lungs, that whatever internal bleeding he had was confined. A cultivator could heal and heal fast, and he had never heard of one dying from something as prosaic as a brain bleed or aneurysm.

Still, the faster he collected the crystals, the better off he would be. There was no telling when other monsters would stumble upon him, and he was in no shape to engate in another fight.

Eventually, the crystals were all picked up; the last couple taking him longer than the last dozen. Between pain and the way his sight kept doubling up on him, Arthur was having trouble focusing. By the time he stumbled over to his backpack and his staff, he was ready to collapse.

Squatting by his pack, Arthur stared at the heavy storage item and winced. There was no way he was going to be able to pick it up and carry it, not with his ribs, not with his hips and arm. Making a decision, he reached over and grabbed the pack and dragged it with him, headed for a fallen tree he recalled.

Once there, he stuck his staff diagonally across the edges of the fallen tree, threw a tarp he extracted with great labour over the top of the entire thing and then absently threw more leaves and branches on top of the hastily constructed camouflaged assemble.

Then crawling within the simply constructed habitat, he crashed to the ground and fell unconscious once more.